Arriving into the moment with its complex of agitated cross-currents. Just a moment, we might say, but does a moment possess duration? Isn’t it rather timeless, a toe dipped into eternity.
Perhaps, just a moment, means: hang on, I just need to turn my mind around, to refocus, to readjust the complexity of ‘me’. Slicing through our inner world we would find various percentages of anxiety, excitement, conscious intention, shock of unexpected configuration of expected realities, an intimation of mortality, random thoughts and feelings, defensive strategies . . . goodness it might be an endless list, but one that we are making constant adjustments to, in order to keep our balance and deal with what life is giving us.
A moment is too vast to navigate and, anyway, I have to clear up the kitchen.
So what about mortality? Our omnipresent death; the deathbeat, heartbeat lending its accompaniment to our lives.
And how is he with dying? I asked. But it’s not something to be talked about. Turn a blind eye – though the art as Nelson’s story makes clear is when to turn the blind eye and when to see what is there. The risk with the blind eye strategy is the danger that somebody might blurt out the truth regarding the elephant in the room; somebody brave enough not to dismiss it as,
– Oh I don’t need to mention that
– Everybody knows about it
– It’s probably only my problem
– I don’t want to expose myself.
Within the heartbeat moments of our mortality there is a necessity to tell the truth. Or at least because telling the truth might be impossible and certainly is in any absolute sense (leave that to God), a necessity to allow ourselves, what shall I say, to lean towards the truth. Let the gravitational pull of love, tend us towards the light.